On today’s date in 1936, just one day after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1, the young American composer Samuel Barber attended the premiere of his String Quartet No. 1. Both premieres took place in Rome, where Barber was enjoying the benefits of the Prix de Rome, which included a two-year residency at the American Academy in the “Eternal City.”

Barber found Rome a congenial place to compose but found writing a string quartet hard going: “I have started a new quartet,” he wrote back home in one letter, “but how difficult it is. It seems to me that because we have so forced our personalities on Music – on Music, who never asked for them! – that we have lost elegance, and if we cannot recapture elegance, the quartet form has escaped us forever.”

It’s perhaps debatable whether Barber recaptured “elegance” in his new quartet, but “eloquence” is another matter: The new quartet’s slow “adagio” was described as being “deeply felt and written with economy, resourcefulness and distinction” according to one critic after a New York performance the following year. Barber later recast this movement for full string orchestra, and, as Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” it’s become one of the best-loved pieces of modern American music.

Samuel Barber (1910–1981) — String Quartet Op. 11 (Tokyo String Quartet) RCA/BMG 61387